Feeds

Member

MoreHYPES

2007/09/18

Tuesday Technology Tidbits - Music Industry or Balkans?

Apple Says: "It's a feature, not a bug!"Buried in the latest Apple iTunes update is a little "feature" that not only prevents your iPod from working with anything but iTunes, but that also links your music database to a single device. Got music of your own that's managed by another program? "Tough!" says Apple.

Universal Says: "We didn't really like selling music anyway."And not to be outdone, Universal Music Group escalated their war with Apple by signing a deal to offer music on Spiralfrog's ad supported service. The catch is that the MP3s can't be burned to CD (yeah, like that will last), and they won't play on the iPod. Oh well, so much for Universal's sales.

9 Comments:

This is why I own an Archos MP3 player. Works just like a hard drive. Plus, the thing is a brick. You could kill an elephant with it and a big slingshot. Not that I'm anti-elephants. It's not their fault the GOP chose them for their totem animal.

PoliShifter... With regard to the iTunes issue: It's not really something that can be "cracked"--at least not like traditional DRM. This has to do with the way iTunes manages it's internal lists of what's on your iPod. Someone will need to engineer a way to produce the signatures that Apple has included that bind the iPod to iTunes' lists.

Sorry, it's kind of hard to explain, but the short version is that it would require a major software change to any program that wants to manage an iPod, and since many of these are free, it probably won't happen.

Station Agent... We'll see, but I don't think so. The ROI just isn't there.

Michael... Well you know the Frogette and I are iPod sluts. We've owned four between us (My 2G, her 3G, her Nano, and my Video). I was just waiting for the iPhone without the phone and am now saving my pennies till I can get one.